


Sleeping

by miera



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-11
Updated: 2012-05-11
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miera/pseuds/miera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too tired to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping

John sat numbly for he didn't know how long as Rodney promptly forgot he was there and went back to the repairs. He and Radek were doing that thing where they spoke in pieces of sentences and short hand gestures that seemed to make perfect sense to them.

Realizing he'd been sitting still John got up and swayed a little. He should do... something. He started shuffling across the control room even as his exhausted mind tried to remember what it was he had to do next. He couldn't come up with anything. He just had to keep going.

He really wanted to sleep, but for some reason he felt like he couldn't stop moving.

Except he could. The city was safe, the immediate danger was over, Rodney was working on fixing everything. John could sleep now.

But his body moved insistently like it just didn't believe his brain. If he settled down something else would go wrong.

He ambled out onto the balcony, not really thinking about what he was going to accomplish there, and found Elizabeth slumped like a rag doll against the wall. He hesitated for a second, knowing if he sat down next to her he might not have the energy to get up again, but she yawned and it looked ridiculously cute – which was not a word he associated with Elizabeth under most circumstances – and he slid down alongside her.

"Thought you'd gone to bed," he mumbled.

"Can't," she said with a shake of her head. "Too tired to sleep."

"But you're not in your office." Elizabeth worked in her office, and usually if she wasn't sleeping she was working, but she wasn't working because she was out here on the balcony.

Distantly John recognized that his cognitive functions were starting to erode.

"No," she agreed calmly. "Too tired to work either."

He nodded. He knew how she felt.

Elizabeth rolled her head to look at him. "Rodney is-?"

"Yeah," he cut her off before she had to finish the question.

"Okay." She yawned again.

John settled himself more comfortably and looked at her. There were dark smudges under her eyes and her hair was limp and matted from dirt, which was also covering her clothes and her pale skin. There were bruises on her face and probably elsewhere that he couldn't see right now, and bloodstains on her arm and legs, some of it hers and some not.

He licked his lips. "Hey."

She turned towards him again and John leaned in and kissed her. At that moment it seemed like the best idea he'd ever had, although he knew there was some reason why he hadn't done it before. He just couldn't remember what it was.

Her lips were chapped and she tasted like copper metal from blood and also like something else he couldn't identify. He hadn't even planned on his tongue getting involved, but her lips had opened against his and it felt freakishly normal and _right_ to deepen the kiss, to slide his fingers through her dirty hair and tilt her face to a better angle to taste her thoroughly.

Under any other circumstances, the tiny noise she made would've sent his nervous system into overdrive. His wrung out body couldn't manage much more than a twitch and an answering little moan of his own as Elizabeth kissed him back.

That finally penetrated the fog of his exhaustion. _Elizabeth was kissing him back._ He gasped a little against her lips as he realized what it was they were doing.

When she pulled away and they both started to gulp down air, he felt her palm pressed against his chest, above the top of his vest, her fingers alongside the pulse of his neck. For a minute John thought he might pass out, from tiredness or lack of oxygen or Elizabeth he didn't know.

He yawned instead, Elizabeth following suit. John's arms were around her and his eyes were shutting against his will as his body gave up the fight to stay conscious. He dragged Elizabeth closer, barely awake enough to register that she cuddled against his body as he fell asleep sitting there leaning against the wall.


End file.
